A mutant world through 'new eyes'
This year's programme of exhibitions, festivals and activities at the CCCB cultural centre in Barcelona explore the idea of change and the radical evolution of our way of life
This year, Barcelona's CCCB (Centre de Cultura Contemporània) will focus on change, so inherent to our times. The exhibitions, debates and festivals will be imbued with the radical metamorphosis that our way of life is undergoing at all levels, from the political and economic to the social and cultural.
The cultural centre's entire programme for the year will deal with mutations, as disturbing as they are stimulating, perhaps painful and yet full of hope: “This is our mission: to think the present” the CCCB director Vicenç Villatoro stresses.
Yet the driving force behind this institution is that it always aims to look at the great questions of our times with “new eyes”, far from the conventional narratives. The objective is to break the stereotypes and reclaim an attitude conciliating cultures, from the scientific and humanistic point of view.
Thus, the dilemmas thrown up by climate change, as the tip of the iceberg of an unsustainable model, will be the backdrop of many of the activities going on this year, from exhibitions, such as Després de la fi del món, curated by José Luis de Vicente (October 19, 2017–April 1, 2018), to the Kosmopolis literary festival (March 22-16, 2017).
Research and creation
Europe in crisis, the real crisis as well the conceptual one, will be another major idea among the many activities that the CCCB will host this year. It aims to be an innovative examination as part of a major project of collective research and creation, which is already being prepared in the exhibition, Democràcies envellides. Five different artists and specialists in different disciplines (a political scientist, a writer, a photographer, a documentalist and a drama writer) have been invited to reflect on the consequences of Europe's increasingly ageing population and from this starting point a series of artworks in different formats will be produced. The results of this process will be on display from April.
New cultural paradigms will find their place in the photo exhibition, Fenomen Fotollibre (March 17-August 27), which will be hosted in two spaces: the CCCB and the new site of the Fundació Colectania on Passeig Picasso. Despite the doom and gloom about the death of books, there have never been so devoted to photography.
The CCCB's budget is 10.3 million euros, to develop and bring this year's series of activities to term, as well as for implementing a series of improvements to its facilities, something that has not happened for a long time.
Villatoro, whose contract expires in November, trusts that this year will be as good as 2016, which attracted the highest number of visitors in the centre's history: more than 450,000. This figure refers to on-site visitors, but the management is also paying special attention to the digital public, who are offered increasingly more content every day. Thus, the virtual CCCB, with over a million visitors, will gain in importance in the future, and it is one of the major growing areas of interest for the cultural venue in disseminating its work and activities.